Monday Musings: September 27, 2010

I was so pleased to see this commentary on CBS’ Sunday Morning show - a response the “Oh woe is me” whine of Ben Stein last week. Poor Ben. You see, he’s rich and doesn’t think it’s fair that he should pay more in taxes. Why? Because it’s just not right.

Linda McGibney expresses what is right with America. The sense of fair play and extending a hand down to those who need a hand up. Mr. Stein expresses everything that has brought into the ditch.

I would like to feel sorry for the super rich, but I can’t. Especially when you consider that the Koch brothers - who’ve been pouring money into the campaigns of radical ‘conservatives’ via their Freedom Works advocacy group - have increased their wealth by $5.5 billion this last year. That’s $5.5 billion each.

The 25 top hedge fund managers took home an average $1 billion - each - last year while average Americans were losing their homes to foreclosure and out there still looking for a job that will just put food on the table. These same hedge fund types paid an average tax rate of 17%.

Whew! Is that unfair or what?

Nobody wants to talk about the 900 pound gorilla in the room since the Reagan era - economic warfare. The so-called conservatives- in order to distract their base from the truth of how much they’ve been losing in actual earned income over the last 30 years - have dangled the bait of Culture Wars instead.

Everybody can be a perceived ‘winner’ as a Culture Warrior*. Not so much in the economic war.

Worry instead about abortion and gay marriage, so they won’t notice that their supposed wealth is actually a fragile real estate/stock market bubble about to burst while the whiz kids of Wall St. walk away with their pockets stuffed.

Meanwhile the Blue Dogs continue to pee on the tree of real Progressive values. The GOP breathlessly declares itself on the side of the Constitution and the American Way - as long as that doesn’t involve stating and standing by any tough policy decisions. They want to extend the Bush tax cuts without saying how they will pay for them. They want to slash the budget but expect everybody to believe that Medicare and Social Security will continue along as before.

Ben Stein and John Boehner. Delusional or cynical? I’m not sure. I am sure that they aren’t in the best interest of Americans.

If you’re still unsure, read what The New York Times editorial had to say.

Here’s an excerpt:

“THE BUDGET DEFICIT The Republicans’ central claim is that they will be able to reduce the budget deficit, while cutting taxes deeply and making marginal cuts in spending. That pledge is impossible to keep. There is no chance of reducing the deficit without tax increases. The budget has been chronically short of revenue since the start of the Bush-era tax cuts, and more indiscriminate cutting will only dig the hole deeper.

Cutting the deficit will also require curbs on the government’s biggest and most popular entitlement programs — Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, collectively 40 percent of the budget. Ditto military spending, another 20 percent. Yet Republicans pledge to shield seniors, veterans and the troops from spending cuts.”

The Corn Refiners Association would like to rename High Fructose Corn Syrup to Corn Sugar. I don’t think they should be able to. High Fructose Corn Syrup is a highly accurate nomenclature. To say ‘Corn Sugar’ gives the impression of simply boiling down corn until fluffy white sugar is left. That’s nonsense. This goes far beyond a simple marketing decision ala changing ‘prunes’ to ‘dried plums’.

The sales of HFCS have been diving the past few years, as it should. There is legitimate public concern that it is contributing to the obesity epidemic - perhaps due to changes it may cause in the human metabolism - but also to the FACT that HFCS has become ubiquitous in the American diet. It’s simply everywhere. It’s in food that you wouldn’t even think was sweet. That is wrong.

A prune is a dried plum. A dried plum is a prune. There is no attempt to deceive.

Changing the name of HFCS is a cynical and duplicitous attempt to circumvent a growing consensus that such frankenfoods don’t belong in our food supply.

Changing the name of High Fructose Corn Syrup to Corn Sugar is double-speak rather like ‘putting Social Security on a sound fiscal footing’. In other words - privatize it so that millions of Americans can lose the last of what little the GOP has allowed them to keep during the next crash.

Here’s an interesting thing - a list of the five most overweight nations in order -

Mexico 69.5%

United States 68%

New Zealand 62.6%

Australia 61.4%

United Kingdom 61.4%

Ugh.

Take Note that the Galena High School Craft Fair is this Friday, October 1 from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. and Saturday, October 2 from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Admission: $3 Individual, $5 family. Location: Galena High School off Mt. Rose Highway, Reno.

I’ll be traveling the first part of this week, but will catch back up with you on Facebook while on the road, and this blog midweek.

Cheers.

-maven

*If only we Secular Progressives were as all powerful as Bill OH MY O’Reilly thinks we are. Sigh.